The Old Creek

The frogs still cry, "Knee-deep! knee-deep!"     Among its starlit pools,     When dark the woodland lies asleep,     And dusk its water cools:     The fireflies round its bank of ferns     Hang will-o'-wisps for lamps,     Where in a place no eye discerns     Enchantment's host encamps.     The bats above it go and come     In reeling rigadoons,     While Elfland beats a beetle-drum,     Or cricket-fiddle tunes;     And in and out, and all about,     The pixy people dance     To katydid song and green-frog gong     That hold the woods in trance.     The moon looks, listening, through its trees     As if to hear its calls,     Or with long arms of light to seize     Its twinkling waterfalls     With Witchcraft who, a foam-white hand,     Its glimmering banks between,     Beckons from sand to riffled sand,     To something far, unseen.     A ghost, that leans beside it still;     The phantom of a boy,     Who followed once its wildwood will     With barefoot troops of joy:     The soul of him who yearns afar     To see, in dusk and dew,     If still it dances with the star     That once his boyhood knew.